Never Tell (Detective D.D. Warren #10)(30)

Downstairs, my mother is in the kitchen. There is a heaping plate of fresh fruit on the kitchen table and she has the Cuisinart whirring away. She turns it off when she sees me.

“High-protein smoothie,” she announces cheerfully. “Full of antioxidants and healthy fats for the baby.”

Only my mother can work a blender while wearing pearls.

There’s no use fighting it. Years of training kick in. I sit at the table. I pick at the fruit. I obediently sip the green sludge.

I don’t look at the fridge. I never look at the fridge. Not that it’s the same one, of course. After the “tragic incident,” my mother had the kitchen gutted. New cabinets, marble countertops, high-end appliances, custom window treatments. It’s all creamy and soft and Italian. Not at all like the original dark cherrywood cabinets, green-and-gold granite tops. Meaning nothing in here should remind me of my father or that day.

But it does. It always does. I don’t care that the flooring has been ripped out and replaced. Or that the stainless steel refrigerator was exchanged for a wood-paneled model. I see the spot where my father died. I recall the smell. I remember looking at his face, so waxy and still, and thinking it didn’t look like him at all.

I don’t know how my mom still lives in this house. But I guess I’ll get to figure that out for myself now. How to go back to the home Conrad and I shared. How to pick up the pieces of a life, where I’m still not sure where we went wrong.

I notice for the first time that all the lights are on and the curtains drawn, though it’s only midday. I don’t have to think about it for long.

“The press?” I ask.

“You know how they are.” My mother waves an airy hand. At least on this we’re united. The media descended the first time, too. Harvard math professor killed in his own home by his teenage daughter. How could they resist? Initially, my mom had thought she could control the story, the way she controlled every other facet of her highly fictionalized life. Needless to say, the reporters ate her alive.

She retreated. Took up the tactic of letting her grand silence speak for her. As a minor, at least I wasn’t subjected to such abuse. But it was weeks, maybe even months, before we could leave our house in peace. I learned to hate the sight of news vans. I learned not to believe anything I saw on TV. At least I got that education early in life, because I’m definitely going to need it now.

Knock on the side door. The one used only by close confidants. My mother bustles over.

Dick Delaney, my lawyer, is standing there, still wearing the same sharply pressed gray suit from the courtroom. He’s a handsome man with his silver hair and closely trimmed beard. I have countless memories of him. Poker nights with my father. Laughing indulgently at all the math jokes, as one of the only nonacademics in the room. How did he even know my father? What had earned him a seat at the poker table? I don’t know. But he was always part of our household, brilliant and successful in his own right, a fellow Harvard alum, which maybe was all the credentials he needed. I never even thought of him as a defense attorney.

Until, of course, sixteen years ago. Again, the smell, the look on my father’s waxy face.

I have this terrible sense of déjà vu. Here we are again, the three of us, this kitchen.

My mom doesn’t say a word. She simply steps back, allowing Mr. Delaney to enter. In an echo of my own thoughts, her right hand is already clutched protectively to her chest, fingering her precious pearls.

He looks from her to me to her again. The expression on his face isn’t good. “After picking up Evie from the courthouse, where did you go?” he asks my mother.

Her brow furrows. “Here. Straight here, of course. Poor Evie needed to rest.”

“No stops along the way?”

“Of course.”

“Not even a drive by her old house so she could pick up personal possessions, items of clothing?”

“Absolutely not. Evie has everything she needs right here.”

Mr. Delaney stares at me. Slowly, I nod, though I already understand I don’t want to hear what he’ll say next.

“Your house is on fire.” He announces it bluntly.

I try to absorb the statement. I hear the words. I just can’t seem to process them. My house. Conrad’s and my home. My husband’s death scene.

“Total loss,” he continues.

The future life I was going to lead. The photos and personal items that tied me to the past.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “You’re sure you were together all afternoon? Both of you? Right here?”

“Of course!” My mother is outraged.

“The police will be coming,” my lawyer says. Then he takes a seat at the table, and together, we wait.

—

THIS TIME, THE knock comes from the front door. But we were already alerted to the detective’s arrival by the sudden spike in noise from across the street—the media spotting the official vehicle and descending with a crescendo of questions. No comment, the police will say. That’s what they always say. After all, it’s not their lives being torn apart.

Mr. Delaney gets up, does the honors. My mother and I don’t look at each other. We can’t. I fix my gaze on my half-finished green smoothie, the piece of uneaten pineapple on my plate. Under the table, my hands are shaking furiously on my lap. Again, I’ve never felt myself such a mess. Shock? Pregnancy hormones? My heart is racing like a hummingbird’s and I suddenly want to blurt out everything, anything. Except I honestly don’t know what to say. I just want whatever magic words will give me my life back.